Former Sturgeon Bay and University of Wisconsin star Nick Greisen, shown playing for the NFL's New York Giants in 2005, is now is director of business development for Chicago-based Pro Financial Services.(Photo: File)

Nearly a decade after his NFL career ended, Nick Greisen might need a sports-style nickname for his post-football life.

How about "The Coverage Linebacker"?

Greisen, a Sturgeon Bay native who had an eight-year run in the National Football League, is still a defender — only now he's in the high-end insurance game, protecting athletes financially from blindside shots of fate like a shredded knee or otherwise unforeseen loss of substantial income.

Greisen, 38, is director of business development for Chicago-based Pro Financial Services. But it's not like the location of the company headquarters has made much difference lately for the well-traveled new corporate executive.

"The beginning part of this year has been a little crazy for me; I haven't been in the office in a full week," Greisen said. "Right now, it's been all of the college all-star games to attend (for networking opportunities)."

When reached earlier this week, Greisen was headed to the airport for a flight to France and a part-business/part-vacation meeting with PFS' London broker.

Greisen starred at linebacker for the Sturgeon Bay Clippers and then the Wisconsin Badgers, leading the nation with 167 tackles as a senior in 2001. He was a fifth-round draft pick of the New York Giants and moved around to three other teams, though his final season in 2009 with the Denver Broncos was spent on injured reserve.

The first two months of 2018 saw him circulating at the East-West Shrine Game in San Francisco; NFLPA Collegiate Bowl at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.; Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala.; and the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. He also made the radio and TV interview rounds during Super Bowl week in Minneapolis in early February.

"More so than (meeting) the individual players, it's a matter of creating contacts with the agents and financial advisers who have control or contact with those individuals," Greisen said.

His firm agreed to help sponsor the Senior Bowl in the form of a cost-free policy for every invited player.

That way, the top NFL draft hopefuls received peace of mind about taking part in the game, rather than skipping it out of fear of getting hurt and jeopardizing their first big pro payday. PFS offered a tax-free $100,000 benefit for the most debilitating injuries — torn ACL or rotator cuff among them — or $50,000 for lesser tears to the hamstring, pectorals or triceps.

"We told (the Senior Bowl organizers) that we could add value to their game," Greisen said. "It helps mitigate the risk of a (Heisman Trophy-winning QB) Baker Mayfield showing up."

Always attuned to improving his sales pitches, Greisen thought the Senior Bowl experiment went well for the first time out. But he also knows where it could get better.

"We maybe need to do more marketing out to the families, send out a (draft) policy directly to the players and their families," Greisen said. "A lot of the guys didn't even know they had the coverage."

Covering both sides

Nick Greisen(Photo: Courtesy Pro Financial Services)

PFS covers customers in each of the four major American sports leagues plus Major League Soccer. It also has divisions for the entertainment industry, lawyers, physicians and boardroom-level executives who want to safeguard their lucrative incomes against death or devastating illness, injury or disability.

Greisen can relate to his athlete clients who fear losing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars overnight, whether from a devastating block or the small print of a contract.

"My own career ended with a knee injury," he said. "And the language of my contract caused me to lose 50 percent of my salary."

Greisen proved his worth to his new employers by pioneering two new insurance products, both dealing with non-guaranteed portions of NFL contracts.

The first offset the "split contract," or paying lower draft picks a lesser amount per week if they're sidelined by injury during their first two seasons. The second type of policy protects against non-payment of roster bonuses.

Greisen explained that players who aren't stars, and thus bring less leverage to the negotiating table, can be forced to take roster bonuses on a week-by-week basis rather than a lump annual sum at the season's start. And some of those players' contracts dictate they must be on the 46-man active roster for a game to get the bonus ("the dress roster"), rather than the full 53-player roster.

Greisen designed the policy after a conversation with a worried fellow Badger, Scott Tolzien, at a UW alumni golf outing. Tolzien is a backup quarterback with the Indianapolis Colts and formerly with the Green Bay Packers.

"The difference between a minimum rookie contract and the split (value) is as much as $117,000," Greisen said. "You can pay 4,500 bucks to make sure you get that $117,000 on Feb. 1 of the next year (if injured).

"Teams are always looking for ways to save money. A guy like Jordy Nelson in 2015 (when he tore his ACL in the preseason) would have lost a whole half-million dollars in roster bonus if his contract had been structured for weekly roster bonuses."

But PFS has customers on both sides of the bargaining table, as the teams likewise want to shield themselves from shelling out massive sums to hurt players. Similarly, the firm protects movie studios, record labels and other entertainment companies against the sudden loss of a bankable star. Coaches and sports execs sign up to guarantee their incomes, like a form of life insurance for the still-living.

Experience leads to understanding

Greisen was part of an uncanny wave of six Door County players drafted into the NFL between 1994 and 2003. The group included Greisen's older brother Chris, a quarterback taken in the seventh round by the Arizona Cardinals in 1999.

Nick Greisen played two years in the defunct United Football League at the end of his career, then tried to reinvent himself as a long snapper for the 2011 NFL season. But that was the year of the NFL lockout, and when training camps finally and belatedly got underway, teams had no time to sign and acclimate any but the top-tier free agents.

"I understand the struggles (former) players have; I didn't know what I wanted to do," Greisen said. "But I had the right people around me during my playing days to educate me, and I was able to save a lot of what I made."

Greisen was able to pay for the two-year master's degree in communications earned by his wife, Caroline, an actress by training. He then followed her to Northwestern University for an MBA from the prestigious Kellogg School of Business in 2015.

Still, finding a job proved difficult even for a guy who once received votes in an ESPN poll trying to identify the smartest player in the NFL. Using a football analogy, Greisen said he was the smaller, slower prospect who "just shows up on film and is a great fit."

"But who do you think teams are going to draft? The faster, stronger guy because that's a known (measurement)," Greisen said. "I kept getting the same song-and-dance in interviews that we love your leadership qualities, love your intangibles, but we just don't see the transferable business skills on your resume.

"It had been four years since I had a paying job."

Until, that is, he found a company allowing him to meld his business brain with his former self as an NFL alum.

"To get that same type of high (as football) in a business setting, it's never going to happen," Greisen said. "But my networks within the NFL and sports organizations gave me credibility."